Abjects or agents? Camps, contests and the creation of ‘political space’

Abstract

The ‘Urdu-speaking population’ in Bangladesh, displaced by the Partition in 1947 and made ‘stateless’ by the Liberation War of 1971, exemplifies some of the key problems facing uprooted populations. Exploring differences of ‘camp’ and ‘non-camp’ based displacement, this article represents a critical evaluation of the way ‘political space’ is contested at the local level and what this reveals about the nature and boundaries of citizenship. Semi-structured and narrative interviews conducted among ‘camp’ and ‘non-camp’ based ‘Urdu-speakers’ found that citizenship status has been profoundly affected by the spatial dynamics of settlement. However, it also revealed the ways in which ‘formal’ status is subverted – the moments of negotiation in which claims to political being are made. In asking how and when a ‘stateless’ population is able to ‘access’ citizenship, through which processes and by which means, it reveals the tension, ambiguity and conceptual limitations of ‘statelessness’ and citizenship, unearthing a reality of partial, shifting and deceptively permeable terrain. In doing so, it also reveals the dissonance and discord (constitutive of an ‘us’ and ‘them’ divide) upon which the creation of ‘political space’ may rely. Citizenship functions to exclude and, therefore, it is very often born of contestation.

Keywords::

• citizenship
• statelessness
• camps
• Agamben
• Bangladesh

Notes

^1. The camp names a space that is formally outside the juridical and political order but, because it captures its subjects outside, is never a condition of pure externality (Agamben 2005, p. 40).

^2. The article is based on fieldwork conducted in Bangladesh between 2006 and 2009 as part of a PhD in Sociology at the London School of Economics. It involved 64 in-depth semi-structured interviews (conducted in Urdu and Bengali with camp and non-camp based ‘Urdu-speakers’), 10 case study narrative interviews with camp and non-camp based ‘Urdu-speakers’, 12 semi-structured interviews with local community leaders and political representatives and 1 civil society focus group. Through the process of interviewing, I encountered a level of warmth and hospitality that I was quite unprepared for. Complete strangers let me into their homes, offered me food and told me their stories. Stories that were sometimes very difficult and often very moving were told with a level of honesty with which I was continually amazed. Thanks and acknowledgement here must go to my research assistant. As a valued, respected well-known ‘in-betweener’, with charm and humour in abundance, interviewees were in the presence of a friend. With his help, learning how to let go and give people the space and time to say what was meaningful to them was an important adaptation I had to make. On occasion, removing structure in the context of a ‘semi-structured interview’ proved a vital way of putting uncomfortable interviewees at ease. Given the space to say what was important to them, and the time to do so at their own pace, people were on the whole very keen to talk about their lives, as the extracts here demonstrate. I can only hope my analysis does justice to their experiences.

^3. How broader social processes of ‘integration’ relate to the acquisition of citizenship is examined in the author's current research.

^4. Refugee camps and camps for the internally displaced together housed around 12 million people in 2007 (Agier 2011). This does not, of course, include transit zones, reception centres, waiting zones, cross-border points or the many other constellations of encampment.

^5. The label ‘Bihari’ literally means a person originating from the Indian state of Bihar. In practice, it is used in reference to all those Urdu-speaking migrants, from Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar and elsewhere, who moved to East Pakistan between 1947 and 1971.

^6. The research on which this article is based took place in the period leading up to the ruling and in its immediate aftermath.

^7. ‘Md. Sadaqat Khan (Fakku) and Others v. Chief Election Commissioner, Bangladesh Election Commission’, Writ Petition No. 10129 of 2007, Bangladesh: Supreme Court, 18 May 2008, available from: http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/4a7c0c352.html [Accessed 10 July 2011].

^8. The label ‘Stranded Pakistani’ was coined shortly after the war and has been commonly used in press and official documents since this time although elements of ‘Urdu-speaking society’ consider the term outdated, misleading and derogatory.